Pricey travel creates more IRS trouble

The IRS spent more than $9 million in 2011 and 2012 on top officials' travel. | AP Photo

About 4 percent of IRS executives — 15 people — accounted for 26 percent of the total $4.8 million spent on top-level travel expenses in fiscal 2011. That’s $1.2 million. In fiscal 2012, the agency spent $1.1 million on travel for 15 people — about 23 percent of the total $4.7 million in travel bills the agency fronted that year.

Compare that with the expense reports for 60 percent of IRS executives, which totaled about $10,000 or less on travel expenses for those same years.

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Most of the executives with the priciest travel budgets lived around the country but traveled to Washington to perform their jobs, which are “national headquarters-types of positions where it appears the IRS selected the people they thought were best for the position, but the majority or all of them, in fact, were not here in the D.C. area,” Holmgren said.

In other words, most were hired to do Washington jobs but were allowed to commute at the agency’s expense.

Some of these people lived on the road for more than half a year, and a few even traveled more days than they worked at the IRS.

TIGTA estimates that there are about 250 IRS workdays each year between holidays and weekends, but one executive spent 321 days and 298 nights on the road. Ten of them — five each year — were on the road for more than 180 days.

In fiscal 2011, the top 15 executives with the biggest travel expenses were on the road or stayed at hotels for an average of 202 days, each incurring travel expenses of about $81,544 that year. The following year, the top 15 averaged 184 days of travel, about $73,054.

“The cost and frequency of travel for these executives indicate that they may not live in the best location to economically accomplish their roles and responsibilities,” the report says, detailing executive travel averaged 40 days in fiscal 2011 and 38 days in fiscal 2012.

Despite the high numbers, the IRS didn’t break any rules.

“We found no misconduct within the IRS on executive travel,” Holmgren said. “There’s nothing that says any particular executive or the service itself was doing anything improper.”

Still, the IRS could be more efficient, he said.

Holmgren told reporters the cost of relocating employees “could be significantly less than long-term travel.”

“While the Federal Travel Regulation does not set any total monetary or duration limits on temporary duty travel, the IRS should consider a temporary or permanent change of station as an alternative to long-term temporary duty travel,” the report suggests.

TIGTA also recommends that the IRS’s chief financial officer do a cost-benefit analysis of long-term travel situations.

Because of the review process, the IRS has already taken steps to address the problem. In April, for example, it began restricting travel to 75 nights a year.

“It is encouraging that in response to TIGTA’s findings, the IRS is taking action to better control executive travel,” TIGTA chief J. Russell George said in a statement.